There is a red chair that once existed in an adoption agency in Seoul between 1983-1991 that was sat on by every adoptee for their 'first photo'. This year, 36 years after the artist’s ‘red chair photo’ was taken, she contacted the agency to enquire about this red chair and if it might still be there. The social worker’s only response––‘The red chair in your picture does not exist’. In the potent slippage of translation, correspondence and negation, this exhibition is a performative affirmation that, ‘yes, it does!’

un/conscious is a large-scale artwork that features a collection of sixteen brightly coloured tactile canvases, creating a kaleidoscopic wall of colour. The textiles featured are recycled offcuts of vintage towels from Re/lax Remade, a sustainably focused, Sydney-based fashion label.

still waters run deep brings together the work of five artists who live or have lived on Wilyakali and Barkindji / Barkandji Country in Far West NSW: Barbara Quayle, Blake Griffiths, Dan Schulz, Tannya Quayle, and Verity Nunan.

Using remnants of the world that her Mum, Aunties, and Nan lived in, Jasmine Miikika Craciun celebrates the love, life and strength they embody. Like the beautiful coloured glass and crockery that has stood the test of time on the sandy flats of Wilcannia long after the humpies have gone, the matriarchs of her lineage do the same.

Prita Tina Yeganeh

My Soil Farsh فرش (Carpet) expresses the profound experience of placemaking through transforming and innovating a cultural object. For Prita Tina Yeganeh, the connection stems from the cultural values and rituals of kinship and community-building deeply embedded in the familial environment that nurtured her sense of belonging as a child.

Magic Cave grew from research Emmaline Zanelli began in early 2023 into the social culture and family dynamics surrounding the mining industry in South Australia, with a focus on youth. Influenced by the young people she met and their interests, Magic Cave is an absurdist fantasy interpretation of life underground

Adele Warner and Gigi Malherbe

Cybermancy brings together Gigi Malherbe’s and Adele Warner’s meditations on the short-comings of the human body. As the suffix “mancy” denotes, artworks cast a speculative gaze to the near contemporary future to examine the integration of technology with the physicality and decay of the body.

Find your CATCH 🎣

Firstdraft is delighted to announce the Firstdraft Auction is back and will open Wednesday 7 August. In its 15th year, the Firstdraft Auction remains steadfast to its aim of supporting artists.

Celine Cheung

Affection brings together artworks that explore ideas of obsession and objectification; fantasy and culpability; sentimentality and subjectivity. The suite of works sees to the artist inhabiting different roles as victim and violator, to invoke discussions of power, agency and gender dynamics.

Katrina Garvey and Lisa Kurtz

This project focuses on the ways deaf and hearing bodies can un/intentionally be gatekeepers, intermediaries or couriers in spaces. porous not only references the collaborative experiences between the artists, but also the way the audience connects those experiences.

Ali Tahayori

I will meet you there, came to realization by the contribution of over twenty friends, family members, artists and acquaintances. The project aims to reflect on the notion of "home" from a collective perspective.

Kate Coyne

Kate Coyne's studio practice explores how experience can be embodied and the nature of the relationship between the body/experience and materiality in a socio-political feminist context. Temporality, the progression of past, present and future is inherent, with materials discolouring over time and gravity taking over form and identity in the same way that it does with an ageing, sagging body.